Guillaume Canet has revealed he had to bring in truck loads of rubbish to dump on the streets of New York for his latest movie, as the city was just too clean and tidy.

The French actor and director - who lives with Inception star Marion Cotillard - set his film Blood Ties in 1970s Brooklyn and wanted to recreate the gritty look of the time.

Guillaume laughed: "Every day, we had a big truck with garbage and we were throwing papers and stuff all the way."

Blood Ties is an English-language remake of a French film Guillaume starred in in 2008.

It stars Billy Crudup and Clive Owen as two brothers, one a cop, one an ex-con, both caught up in the world of organised crime. Marion stars as Clive's character's ex-girlfriend.

The film has just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival but Guillaume - best known in front of the camera for his role as Leonardo DiCaprio's friend in The Beach - admitted he may have to adapt it for a US audience - by taking out the silence.

"I will probably have to cut some stuff for the American audience," he said. "The American audience doesn't have this interest of getting into some moments like this, and silence. They want another pace and another rhythm."

But he thinks it is a shame, adding: "There is something particular in this cinema that I like and that I miss right now as an audience.

"It's to have the time with the characters. I think that nowadays we are eating life so fast, we are doing things so fast....in the cinema it's the same thing. We don't take time to digest things."